LONDON.-Simon Lee Gallery announces Screen Memory, a group exhibition that reflects upon how multi-generational artists have engaged with the complex notion of collective memory. Working across painting, photography, installation and video, the artists each have very distinct approaches yet collectively reveal the paradoxical ways in which individual and shared memories are retrieved and intersect.

The exhibition title Screen Memory is a Freudian term for a particular recollection that masks deeper psychologically significant memories. Within Freuds theorem memories overlay and obscure each other, but vestiges of hidden layers rise to the top and coalesce. Here, the theory is used as a loose analogy for the ways in which shared and personal memories similarly commingle in the art object. It also refers to the kinds of flat surfaces and literal screens used within the exhibition  in this way, these screens can be seen as planes in which latent and manifest content are contiguous and the distinction between collective and personal content is blurred.

The appropriation art of the post-modern era tended toward a hijacking or disfiguring of mass media images and a sense of psychological distance. Screen Memory however focuses on the lateral and idiosyncratic aspects of quotation and recollection; from the flat effect of simulation and the disquieting effects of fragmentary reminiscence, to the absurd and humorous distortions and ruptures as familiar images intertwine with flights of imagination.

Allen Ruppersberg was born in 1944, Cleveland, OH and lives and works in New York and Santa Monica, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include What is a Stamp?, Jumex Foundation of Contemporary Art, Mexico City (2015); The Singing Posters, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA (2015); FOR COLLECTORS ONLY (everyone is a collector), greengrassi, London, UK (2014); No Time Left to Start Again and Again, WIELS, Institute for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium (2014); The Never Ending Book, Tate, St Ives, Cornwall, UK (2013); The Birth and Death of Rock n' Roll, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2013) and Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Codex, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2014); In Parts, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY (2013) and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Fondazione Prada, Venice, Italy (2013).

Jim Shaw was born in 1952, Midland, MI and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include The End is Here, The New Museum, New York, NY (2016); Entertaining Doubts, MASS MoCA, West Adams, MA (2015); Jim Shaw, Simon Lee Gallery, London, UK (2015); Jim Shaw: The Hidden World, Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel, CH (2014) and Chalet Society, Paris, France (2013); Jim Shaws Dream Drawings, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2012); The Rinse Cycle, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2012) and Left Behind, CAPC, Musee deArt Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2010). In 2013 his work was included in The Encyclopedic Palace at The 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. In 2017 he will have a solo display of new works at The Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.